The Bear Essay | Critical Essay #2

The Bear Critical Essay #2

In the following excerpt, Perluck explains that he does not believe that Isaac McCaslin acted honorably in rejecting his inheritance. Rather, he believes that McCaslin failed to accept responsibility.

The usual reading of "The Bear" makes of Isaac McCaslin a kind of saint who, by repudiating his inheritance—the desecrated land upon which a whole people has been violated— performs an act of expiation and atonement which is a model for those acts that must follow before the curse upon the land is lifted Bee's repudiation of the land, at twenty-one, with which the tortuous inner section of "The Bear" opens, and over which he and his cousin, McCaslin Edmonds, debate in the commissary, is seen in terms of what the reader understands Ike to have learned and attained under the influence of Sam Fathers in the untainted Wilderness, the "freedom and humility and pride." The story is of one...
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